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After a lifetime of being tech support for everyone I know outside of work, I do not relate to this
For me it depends, when it’s an uncle I hardly have a relationship with randomly asking me to fix his printer because I’m good with computers. Then no think you, I just tell him to google the problem or ask Mistral-AI
If it’s my close family then I love helping them
It super depends on the person. But for my SO no problem. For my out of town family lmaooo forget about it.
After 1 year of tech support: “I can fix it!”
After 15 years: “I’ve never used a computer in my life.”
Like others stated, if it’s not someone I’m close to, I wouldn’t want to do it. If my partner however asks me for help, being able to help her and solve a real problem she has, brings me tremendous joy.
Man, I don’t recognize this at all. At work I’m currently in the middle of a two-month project that I think will end up producing about ten lines of code. It’s all about tracking a bunch of stuff down in a gigantic code base and then trial-and-erroring all of it until it works.
So, my mother-in-law’s phone keyboard switches to French-Canadian? Yeah, I can definitely fix that! My dad wants a mesh network in his house so he can listen to music in the garage? Can do! My kid’s audio player breaks and I need to transplant in a new part? Give it to me! My wife’s computer won’t print suddenly? These little wins (and sometimes medium sized wins!) are euphoric. They keep me from feeling like I’ve wasted an entire day switching one variable, running a build, and then switching it back.
Sure, it gets annoying when they don’t try anything before they ask, or they keep having the same problem over and over again. But that’s by far the minority.
Yeah I don’t relate to this at all with computers because of the association with work. But I do with other things!
A friend asked if I could fix the zipper on his pants. I was very tired, glanced at it and said nah, too much work. You’d have to unsew everything, split the seams apart, and sew back together. But my brain wouldn’t let go of it. I already solved in my bed. So that’s what I did. The satisfaction of completion and the look on his face when I actually just fixed it after saying no was pure dopamine.
Depends on the topic. Friend recently said that his old PC will no longer receive Windows 10 security updates soon and he wants to try Linux, and just wanted quick advice. I had plans but I was over at his house within 10 minutes
Part of it is not wanting to enable people to not even bother trying to do anything on their own.
But someone who at least tries? Oh yeah, sure I’ll help!:-)
Same, if I came home in that condition and the first thing brought up was yet another tech issue, I’d fucking slam the door and go get wasted at a bar.
« I don’t know about windows we only have Mac at work, so I move to mac at home years » works pretty well for me.
"Oh, I just got my new mac and i could really use some help with . … "
Of course , do you still have the installation CD so I can erase absolutely everything and reinstall it from scratch ? That’s the only thing I know …
The last two times I had relatives ask me for remote support to remove the latest super obvious virus they loaded up I just said “Oh, sorry… I don’t really know Windows anymore.” That’s had a 100% success rate.
Started feeling like a tech support vending machine
I fix stuff because I can’t fix myself.
Aww man that was such a good show! I still miss it sometimes…
For some reason the only electronics I get asked for help with are literal e-waste which existence must be considered crime against computing, engineering and even humanity. Because of that, my success rate is less than half of cases. Is it bad, or should I consider it good that people only call me in worst possible cases where everything else failed?
I beg friends for ewaste and harvest their organs.
Even an Oxford comma couldn’t save that one.
relevant xkcd
Pretty sure I could build a battery bank that would rival styropyro’s most recent one.
Nothing is e-waste if you’re skilled enough
Anything made by Dell is. Try disassembling one of their mini PCs. I don’t know what tools they have at the dell manufacturing plant, but they must not be made of normal matter that’s all I can tell you, because otherwise how have they managed to put a screw that holds the PSU in place, under the PSU itself.
I’d really give it a try, if I had one. I find some pleasure in trying to fix and find new life for unused hardware, no matter how old or weird it is. Well, sometimes I fail, but I keep it in case I get nrw ideas for it in the future.
what do you do with a laptop that has 4 GB ram and a HDD of the slower kind? xfce is not really more memory efficient than plasma.
4 gb is pretty reasonable for light usage. The hdd can be formatted as btrfs with compression for better performance. I’d also consider replacing the hdd with an ssd and using the hdd as extra storage, if possible.
HP laptops are like that, unfortunately.
Never hear of them. But it sounds like the famous brand du
Acers are like that in my experience. The last one I got with the complaint of “being too slow” had half the case empty because they re-used the old case that was supposed to have a CD-drive in it. And, in it’s place, there was a fan with no heatpipes, no radiator, nor even any holes on the bottom, just some spacers so it sucks and recirculates the air from within the case, and blows it somewhere in the general direction of the motherboard, where, a fucking mile away, there’s a G-shaped piece of foil with just TWO fins slapped on top of the CPU.
The two gigs of ram are, of course, soldered on, and there was already an ssd (though, on SATA and no secondary port either). So I just settled on blowing the dust out and swapping whatever sludge they had for a decent thermal paste, put Xubuntu on it and advised the nearest recycling plant’s address. Of course, I could drill some holes and hack some better thermal solution, but I found that this 5+yr Celeron machine with 720p TN panel is just not worth any effort. It was brand new, btw…
Not a fan of that font. The tight kerning slows reading.
I don’t think it is a font, the letters are inconsistent. I think it’s just someone’s handwriting.
I don’t think anyone would bother drawing out letters by hand. That just seems weird.
How would you even do that?
Like the ancients of the 1900’s.
Are you trying to say that handwriting is beyond the capabilities of man?
It’s less than a sentence with a dialogue I’m sure they’ll be able to cope.
I just went from disgusted to impressed at breakneck speed
installs linux
Do you have the source of this comic? I would like to see more
not op, but the last panel has the signature “catana comics” https://catanacomics.com/
the website seems to be just links to their shop and instagram - where they post their comics.
They are killing the open web :(
I used to read a bunch of webcomics. I had collected a bunch of RSS links to read every day. I joined Instagram a few years ago to see what was happening with my friends. Finding out that some creators are exclusive to that platform was really sad. Going from reading comics in chronological order with each new post following the last to reading in some order chosen by an engagement algorithm was horrible. I’ve since quit visiting Instagram. Engagement can be good for getting more views but the user experience is less enjoyable.
heh, still using bunch of stupidly old rss-feeds for webcomics. Admittedly some of them have turned into just links to their websites, but most of them still work fine! My list of comic rss’ date way back to early google reader -times, if not older.
I still follow some through freshrss. Thats why i always ask people here to drop links so i can add them.
This goes away in your 30s. You get an afterimage in your 40s.
Yeah. The last thing I want to do when I’m not working is to get on another computer.
Worse: somebody else’s computer, with links to google on the desktop and the display set to 50hz
Doesn’t that distract him from figuring out what he really wants?
I think he wants the distraction lol
Who wants to go for a drive when feeling depressed. I don’t think that road rage helps. What about going for a walk?
Ive heard people complain that a lot of Americans cities fully need a car to get anywhere. Like next to no walking ability.
Living in a distopia
Depends where you live, I used to love driving home at nights on long winding quiet roads. Very relaxing
so true. i hate it
